Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you should Know, the Very Tale
Speaker 1: King Edition.
Speaker 2: I guess you're not the one and only so that's
Speaker 2: I could come up with. I love stories of allegedly
Speaker 2: mad kings. I've spoken before about the Madness of King George.
Speaker 2: A great film, sure, and I'm surprised noone's done a
Speaker 2: movie about this character.
Speaker 1: I am too, as a matter of fact, because even
Speaker 1: if he's not that well known, and he's pretty well known,
Speaker 1: his castle is certainly extraordinarily well known.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Which one, well, yeah, he made three castles, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: But the one that really takes the cake is Nushevenstein,
Speaker 1: which means new swan Stone.
Speaker 2: Do you want to know the German pronunciation.
Speaker 1: I just gave it.
Speaker 2: Neus Schwanstein.
Speaker 1: That's what I said, Oh, okay, great, is it really?
Speaker 2: Yeah? For Ei it's always a second letter in germanis,
Speaker 2: and then nei is it's not new It's.
Speaker 1: NOI gotcha, So uh yeah, I'll just call it new
Speaker 1: Swanstone Castle then from now on, Yes, that's what it means, right,
Speaker 1: all right, let me try my hand at this. Okay,
Speaker 1: Ludwig the Second and we're saying the W like a V.
Speaker 2: Correct Uh yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ludwig the Second, known as the fairy Tale King
Speaker 1: in German, fairy tale King is dear mark and kunig.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just got to work on your umlauts.
Speaker 1: I thought i'd nailed it, so okay, what is that one? Then?
Speaker 2: I think that would be uh merchenkinnig.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, at any rate, I love these words, I
Speaker 1: just can't pronounce them at all.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm going on German. I learned in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight and eighty nine, and well he's still about ninety
Speaker 2: one two. I don't know if I do or not.
Speaker 1: So as we'll see. Even if you haven't heard of
Speaker 1: Ludwig or Ludwig, he is a really appealing character in history.
Speaker 1: He was a real real life character, but he was
Speaker 1: I think he kind of taps into this universal desire
Speaker 1: that everybody has every once in a while. Some people
Speaker 1: have more than others, but we all like face times
Speaker 1: and circumstances and consequences that make us just want to
Speaker 1: turn away from the world, turn inward into like a
Speaker 1: fantasy world of our own making where we can be happy,
Speaker 1: and most of us don't go actually do that. Ludwig
Speaker 1: the Second did just that because he had the op
Speaker 1: opportunity and he had the means to do it. And
Speaker 1: I think in that sense he's appealing in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Plus he's a deeply tragic romantic figure as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as they say, it's good to be the king, right, sure, sure,
Speaker 2: in his case for a little while at least, well,
Speaker 2: actually for a long while.
Speaker 1: He had a nice run, he did twenty something years.
Speaker 2: But let's set up the stage of kind of what
Speaker 2: was going on when he came about in southeastern Germany
Speaker 2: what was known as Bavaria, and they still call that
Speaker 2: area Bavaria like that, but back then it was just Bavaria.
Speaker 2: It had its own you know, it was independent, and
Speaker 2: it had its own taxes and it had its own constitution.
Speaker 2: But it was surrounded by just a lot of upheaval
Speaker 2: in Europe at the time. And when he was born
Speaker 2: to Crown Prince Ludwig the Second, he's born in eighteen
Speaker 2: forty five. I'm sorry that was his name. He was
Speaker 2: born to King Maximilian the Second and Marie of Prussia
Speaker 2: had a brother named Otto who suffered from mental illness
Speaker 2: looked like probably schizophrenia, and his aunt, Princess Alexandra, also
Speaker 2: suffered from some sort of mental illness because she believed
Speaker 2: one of the things. She believed that she had swallowed
Speaker 2: a piano made of glass when she was a kid,
Speaker 2: and she was protecting it and if she moved the
Speaker 2: wrong way, it could shatter. And the reason we bring
Speaker 2: those two cases up is because Ludovig's own mental capabilities
Speaker 2: would be questioned later in life. And so you obviously
Speaker 2: look to the family a lot of times and say, hey,
Speaker 2: he also had this in his bloodline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had an uncle who thought he was Saint Jerome. Right,
Speaker 1: So Ludovig was born into like get Like you said,
Speaker 1: this really strange time or time of turmoil geopolitically, and
Speaker 1: like you said, Bavaria was an independent state. It was
Speaker 1: a kingdom, and it was one of the last, one
Speaker 1: of the last kingdoms. Like in the area, things were
Speaker 1: moving more towards more of a nation state, more of
Speaker 1: less monarchy, more constitution kind of thing, right, And Germany
Speaker 1: was very much on the brink of basically being brought
Speaker 1: together into the modern Germany that we think of it now.
Speaker 1: This happened when Ludwig was I think eighteen or nineteen
Speaker 1: or twenty years old.
Speaker 2: Basically I think he rose to the throne at eighteen. Okay,
Speaker 2: one thing we should set up though, just you know,
Speaker 2: as far as his his palace that he would later
Speaker 2: go on to build that he's famous for, he grew
Speaker 2: up in these kinds of palaces. Obviously is royalty in Bavaria.
Speaker 2: At the time, the place where he was mainly raised
Speaker 2: was called hohen Schwangau Castle, even though he was born
Speaker 2: in Nimfenburg Palace. But both of these places, if you're
Speaker 2: looking at you know, quality castles, they were both pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Growing up in these places, little Ludwig was like, you know,
Speaker 2: this established his esthetic of what he thought was amazing
Speaker 2: and beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there was a quote from his mom that
Speaker 1: said that as a child, he enjoyed dressing up, took
Speaker 1: pleasure in play acting, loved pictures, and liked making presents
Speaker 1: of his property, money and other possessions.
Speaker 2: Does that mean like giving it away?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like here, I want you to have this.
Speaker 1: That's a good kid, right, not exactly like king type behavior.
Speaker 1: And as we'll see, he basically set the stage for
Speaker 1: himself or set the tempo for himself from a very
Speaker 1: early age, it turns out. So I think, like you said,
Speaker 1: he was eighteen when his father died and he ascended
Speaker 1: to the throne. He became king of Bavaria in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, and he felt totally unprepared for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was not excited about it, like a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, kind of boy kings were. He had
Speaker 2: never he wasn't very well schooled, seems very sheltered, didn't
Speaker 2: travel abroad, really never wanted anything to do with you know,
Speaker 2: kinging or anything like that kind of throughout his life,
Speaker 2: it seems like. And he was a total pacifist at
Speaker 2: a time where there was a lot of warring going
Speaker 2: on that it corrupts people's morals, makes them unable to
Speaker 2: entertain grand noble ideals, dulls them for spiritual enjoyment. So
Speaker 2: he was a pacifist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was also very much opposed to hunting, and
Speaker 1: he loved nature, right, I love this guy. So he
Speaker 1: was apprehensive. He did have a really good education, he
Speaker 1: just felt like he didn't have enough of it to
Speaker 1: qualify as a ruler of a kingdom. But that's the
Speaker 1: way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Sorry, king, But when he
Speaker 1: came to power within just a couple of years, despite
Speaker 1: his pacifist leanings, Bavaria was forced into two different wars,
Speaker 1: and as a result of that, the geopolitical map changed dramatically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, they were allied with Australia because of
Speaker 2: royal bloodlines.
Speaker 1: He said, Australia.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So remove the l and there's a couple I think
Speaker 1: another vowlers so that he's.
Speaker 2: To another A clearly meant austra They were allied with Austria.
Speaker 2: Who knows what he thought about Australia. No one ever asked,
Speaker 2: as far as I know. And so when Prussia came
Speaker 2: knocking on the door for the Seven Weeks War, that
Speaker 2: he was sort of forced to fight with Austria. And
Speaker 2: then they got their butts went pretty good. And then
Speaker 2: Bavaria was part of, or at least under the thumb
Speaker 2: of Prussia to the north. And then when the Franco
Speaker 2: Prussian War started, then they had to fight with Prussia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then after the Franco Prussian War, the Prussians
Speaker 1: came out on top and at that point, they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what, We're just gonna take over
Speaker 1: all of Germany, and they established the first Reich, the
Speaker 1: German Empire, that collected all these separate little kingdoms, including Bavaria,
Speaker 1: and put them under the rule of Prussia. But rather
Speaker 1: than being Prussia, the whole group, the whole collection that
Speaker 1: was now combined was Germany as we recognize it today,
Speaker 1: although a little more because there's a bunch of Poland
Speaker 1: that was also of Prussia that would be included in
Speaker 1: that map of Germany. But that was an enormous, huge change,
Speaker 1: and for Ludwig the Second personally, it meant that he
Speaker 1: was he had no power any longer. He was a
Speaker 1: ceremonial figurehead, and geopolitically speaking, he really was not very
Speaker 1: significant at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I imagine, I mean, from everything I know about
Speaker 2: poor little Ludwig, this probably wasn't the worst thing in
Speaker 2: the world, because all of a sudden he was forced
Speaker 2: into a figurehead sort of role, right, And I get
Speaker 2: the idea that that was probably ideal for him, Like
Speaker 2: he didn't he didn't want to govern. It seems like
Speaker 2: he didn't mind doing the day to day bureaucracy. Of
Speaker 2: the job, yes, and like you know, signing the things
Speaker 2: he needed to sign and allocating the things he needed
Speaker 2: to allocate. But he was not interested in being king,
Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden sort of under this
Speaker 2: new I mean sort of protection in a way as
Speaker 2: being part of the German Empire and only having figurehead duties,
Speaker 2: he was free to be a fanciful boy king.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and tadd a little nuance. He was totally fine
Speaker 1: with being king, but he wanted to be like an
Speaker 1: absolute monarch, like God's divine representative on earth, like the
Speaker 1: kings of the centuries before were considered. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: happening even if Prussia wasn't running the show, because by
Speaker 1: that time, Bavaria had become a constitutional monarchy, so even
Speaker 1: before the German Empire was founded, he wasn't nearly as
Speaker 1: powerful a king as he would have liked to have been.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that, combined with his pacifism, combined with his
Speaker 1: proneus to fantasy, he was like, yes, this is my chance.
Speaker 1: I'll see y'all later. I'm going to go over here
Speaker 1: into this little fantasy world and it's going to be awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He got to basically pretend that he was the king
Speaker 2: that he wasn't. Yes, yeah, well put and he was
Speaker 2: a Romanticist. He was very much into Romanticism. It was
Speaker 2: that's something that had already come and gone. But just
Speaker 2: like so many teenagers are obsessed with the generations before them,
Speaker 2: he loved the literature and the art of the movement. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Romanticism was all about emotion and art and vast imagination
Speaker 2: and history, and so all of this sort of wrapped
Speaker 2: up in this idea that he was like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pretend like I'm Louis the fourteenth and
Speaker 2: basically sit around all day and fantasize.
Speaker 1: Right, And then also, really importantly, one part of Romanticism,
Speaker 1: the architectural part of is called historicism. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: basically a nostalgic return to past architectural styles, but rather
Speaker 1: than going for historical accuracy, you go for idealization or improvement.
Speaker 1: So it ends up being like this fantasy version of
Speaker 1: what used to be yeah, more gilded things exactly. That
Speaker 1: totally jibed with how Ludwig liked to live and think.
Speaker 2: Should we take a break, Yeah, Well, this one's been
Speaker 2: densely packed so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of geopolitics, a lot of architecture,
Speaker 1: historic movements, what else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's about it. Okay, pronunciation, Yeah, don't forget that,
Speaker 2: all right, we'll be right back, all right. So welcome
Speaker 2: to ACQ. This is where we talk about the private
Speaker 2: life of Ludwig. And I love how Livia put it
Speaker 2: in this section title.
Speaker 1: No that was me, Oh that was you. Yeah, Oh
Speaker 1: that sounded.
Speaker 2: A little bit like Livia. But now I see Josh
Speaker 2: all over. It was Ludwig gay. Yes, yes he was,
Speaker 2: And that's the deal. Ludwig was a gay man, a
Speaker 2: gay king. He was sort of arranged to be marriage
Speaker 2: married to his twenty two year old cousin, Elsa, which
Speaker 2: was a who was a duchess in not Australia but
Speaker 2: in Austria, and not surprisingly, he did not go through
Speaker 2: with that wedding. He blamed it on the father in
Speaker 2: law and that was just a deal. He bested up
Speaker 2: with Elsa's sister, Empress Elizabeth, and they were peas in
Speaker 2: a pod.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They both had a disdain for war and violence.
Speaker 1: They both loved classical literature. They both liked their solitude,
Speaker 1: and so much so that Ludwig, when he had his
Speaker 1: birthday parties. Most of the people who were ever invited
Speaker 1: were the people who already worked for him, like his
Speaker 1: attendants and servants. They would dress up and come to
Speaker 1: the parties as guests. That's how how much of a
Speaker 1: loaner he was, and he liked it that way. And
Speaker 1: he was also not exactly quiet about his sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: which is really something at the time. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the late nineteenth century in Bavaria. This is
Speaker 1: the king and he's he's just he's not exactly making
Speaker 1: it a huge secret. And in fact, while he was alive,
Speaker 1: it was like a very open secret that Ludwig enjoyed
Speaker 1: the company of men, as they were to put it
Speaker 1: back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they When you were listing out the shared loves
Speaker 2: that he and Empress Elizabeth had, you left one out
Speaker 2: though they both loved Shawn Cassidy.
Speaker 1: Seawan Cassidy. What was his one hit? He just head
Speaker 1: the one, right.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. I remember though we
Speaker 2: were all in love with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had that great feathered hair, me.
Speaker 2: Ludwig, the whole, all of us. Sure, So, like you said,
Speaker 2: his relationships were no, it was sort of like one
Speaker 2: of those open secrets when he had fixers. You know,
Speaker 2: he was the king, so when something happened, people would
Speaker 2: you know, would clean up after him. I think there
Speaker 2: were men in the stables that he was very fond
Speaker 2: of and perhaps had you know, physical relationships with one
Speaker 2: man named Richard Hornig, who would eventually be his private secretary.
Speaker 2: And there was also a groom named Karl hessel Schwert
Speaker 2: who was sort of his traveling valet and apparently wingman
Speaker 2: because would help him find sexual partners. But anytime something
Speaker 2: like this would happen and it got to you know,
Speaker 2: sort of, the rumors became widespread, like people would just
Speaker 2: I was about to say, people would disappear. They wouldn't
Speaker 2: like have them snuffed out or anything, but people be
Speaker 2: relocated with other jobs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we know all this because he wrote a
Speaker 1: lot about this in his diary entries, and from what
Speaker 1: I gleaned from it, he would basically pull out all
Speaker 1: the stops for his dates, like there'd be champagne and
Speaker 1: candles and gifts and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Model service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically you gotta do it. Yeah. But also in
Speaker 1: his diary, very sadly, he was a devout very pious Catholic,
Speaker 1: so he had a lot of inner turmoil, but that
Speaker 1: he was conflicted between his religious beliefs and his sexual orientation,
Speaker 1: and so in that sense, that's like just one leg
Speaker 1: of the stool that make him a tragic figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. One thing that we aren't as clear about
Speaker 2: as far as relationship goes is his relationship to composer
Speaker 2: Richard Wagner. He was a big, big fan of Wagner
Speaker 2: since he was a little kid, and once he became
Speaker 2: king and had means, he found Wagner sort of on
Speaker 2: hard times financially and was able to basically say like, hey,
Speaker 2: I love your music. You're not doing too well, so
Speaker 2: why don't you let me financially support you. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you'll kind of just be like my private entertainer. I mean,
Speaker 2: you can still go on to make your great compositions,
Speaker 2: but you can also do these private operas and private
Speaker 2: concerts here in the court. And it was a mutually
Speaker 2: beneficial relationship for both of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was considered Ludwig was considered one of the
Speaker 1: great patrons of the arts of the nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: he actually made Munich, which was the capital of Bavaria
Speaker 1: essentially the music capital of Europe during the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to give you an idea of what people who
Speaker 1: were into Romanticism, what they talked like in their letters
Speaker 1: back then. Yeah, there's a really great quote about Wagner
Speaker 1: that he wrote to I think his mistress who would
Speaker 1: eventually become his wife, Kozima. He said, he is unfortunately
Speaker 1: so beautiful and wise, soulful and lordly that I fear
Speaker 1: his life must fade away like a divine dream in
Speaker 1: this base world.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is what he's writing to his wife
Speaker 1: about this new patron he has. And Wagner was into women.
Speaker 1: He had a long standing affair with the woman, like
Speaker 1: I said, who would become his wife. But if you
Speaker 1: read some of their letters, and even taking into account
Speaker 1: that people expressed friendship much differently than they do today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: between men, especially even taking that into account, like the
Speaker 1: flowery language they would use and just the desperation they
Speaker 1: would have at being a part. It's still not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent clear what all went down between Wagner and
Speaker 1: Ludwig when it was just the two of them hanging
Speaker 1: out in a castle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, there was one quote that Wagner wrote,
Speaker 2: I think to Ludwig, right after they had been you know,
Speaker 2: in each other's company, he wrote this, how can I
Speaker 2: find words to describe you the magic of this hour?
Speaker 2: I am in your angelic arms. We are near to
Speaker 2: one another. So you know that reads is you know,
Speaker 2: possibly something happening there. And I'm certainly no expert, but
Speaker 2: was it this year or Olivia that found the LGTBQ.
Speaker 1: History writer Olivia found that guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a guy named Richard Norton wrote that their
Speaker 2: relationship was almost certainly physical, though not necessarily genital. So
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems like if that's correct, or if
Speaker 2: that you know, he's he's you know, it's a supposition.
Speaker 2: But if that's correct, then it may be the case
Speaker 2: of a young wealthy patron who is around his idol
Speaker 2: and the idol maybe you know, giving the patrons just
Speaker 2: some extra time and affection to stay in the in
Speaker 2: the good graces and to stay funded. Maybe like like
Speaker 2: who knows what happened behind closed doors, But that's at
Speaker 2: least Richard Horton's take.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And ultimately it doesn't matter what happened. I think
Speaker 1: the point is is that Ludwig was a gay icon
Speaker 1: before there were such things as gay icons, and he
Speaker 1: still is today.
Speaker 2: It's just pallace intrigue basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So from the moment Wagner showed up or
Speaker 1: was invited to court through Ludwig's death, he was supported
Speaker 1: by Ludwig financially. And there's it's pretty widely agreed that
Speaker 1: had Ludvig not supported Wagner, he probably would not have
Speaker 1: been able to create a lot of the compositions that
Speaker 1: he came up with.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, so in that sense, Ludwig the Second gave the
Speaker 1: world a lot of Wagner's later work. And if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with Wagner in his Germanic nationalism, he was also
Speaker 1: an anti Semite. And one of the cool things about
Speaker 1: Ludwig is he objected to his friend's anti semitism. He
Speaker 1: didn't just turn a blind eye to it.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a great guy. The more I find
Speaker 1: out about him more I just love him totally.
Speaker 2: So the other thing that he was really into, like
Speaker 2: we kind of mentioned early, was architecture, especially Romanticist stuff
Speaker 2: sort of Byzantine influences and Roman kind of stuff Byzantine
Speaker 2: as Roman, I guess, but he loved to build things.
Speaker 2: He loved to take on these big projects, even though
Speaker 2: he did not hunt and was against it. He built
Speaker 2: a lavish hunting retreat. He built these three palaces that
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, and the UNESCO World Heritage Sites had
Speaker 2: this to say of the palaces. The monarch created artificial
Speaker 2: alternative worlds in which he could immerse himself in far
Speaker 2: distant places and past eras. Their main function was to
Speaker 2: simulate literary and ideal fantasy worlds as realistically as possible,
Speaker 2: using architecture, art and technology in order to produce an
Speaker 2: all encompassing experience, a perfect illusion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that says it all. I left it out of
Speaker 1: this quote, but it also was on to say he
Speaker 1: was also a really big fan of Australia. Right, So
Speaker 1: they said something, UNESCO said something. They used the word technology,
Speaker 1: and that was part of that historicism, that you took
Speaker 1: something that you loved about the past, but you improved it,
Speaker 1: you made it better. And part of that was using
Speaker 1: modern technology. And Ludwig was an eager, enthusiastic early adopter
Speaker 1: of new technology, in particular electricity, and he was using
Speaker 1: this stuff in the eighteen seventies. It's worth pointing out
Speaker 1: Edison did not invent the light bulb, but he did
Speaker 1: produce the first best incandescent light bulb. That wasn't until
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty. Ludwig was already using light bulbs and electricity
Speaker 1: in the decade before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and using them as every lovely outdoor cafe does
Speaker 2: with like string lights. He had a artificial cave, and
Speaker 2: this is at Linderhorf Castle. He had an artificial cave
Speaker 2: in a lake which had these color lights everywhere. He
Speaker 2: eventually would build a recreation of Versailles on a lake island.
Speaker 2: I believe it's called Oh Jesus, this is a tough one.
Speaker 2: Herron Shimissy Palace. But that was What do you think
Speaker 2: it is?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that sounds like a town along
Speaker 1: the Mississippi. It didn't sound German at all.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't look German. I don't think it's I
Speaker 2: don't think it is German.
Speaker 1: I think it is.
Speaker 2: Herron Harron him him hem c. How would you say it?
Speaker 1: I think I liked what you just said. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna stick of that. I'm not attempting it. I'm just
Speaker 1: making fun.
Speaker 2: That's all, okay, nice work.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: That was never finished but they did finish some sections.
Speaker 2: But his most famous, the one that we're going to
Speaker 2: kind of focus on is uh, you want to try
Speaker 2: it again, tough guy?
Speaker 1: Uh, A new Swanstone.
Speaker 2: Neuschwanstein Castle, which I mean, you gotta look this thing up.
Speaker 2: It's it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I say, we take a break and then come back
Speaker 1: and talk about Neusch von.
Speaker 2: Stein stein man Stein. No, it is done.
Speaker 1: You're right, you know you're just confusing me. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back, okay, everybody. So we talked about a couple
Speaker 1: of other castles, but stein Uh is the one that
Speaker 1: is most associated with Ludwig the second the first one,
Speaker 1: Linderhoff is considered this technological amusement park. The other one
Speaker 1: that you said was like a recreation of Versailles news
Speaker 1: Swanstein was the most magical looking recreation of what's called
Speaker 1: Romanesque architecture that you would just think of essentially as
Speaker 1: like it was just like Sleeping Beauty's Castle at disney
Speaker 1: World in Disneyland, so much so that he must have
Speaker 1: been inspired by that.
Speaker 2: Are we putting a pin in that or talking about that?
Speaker 1: We can talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, supposedly Walt Disney visited that castle with
Speaker 2: his wife in the nineteen fifties. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the main castle there in Disney World, and I
Speaker 2: guess Disneyland has one too, right, I've never been there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks a heck of a lot like Neus Schwanstein.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it is one hundred percent certain
Speaker 1: that he modeled it after that. And if you see it,
Speaker 1: like even if it wasn't a percent, and you'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he totally modeled it after that. It looks like a
Speaker 1: fairy tale castle. If you are not driving right now
Speaker 1: and you're just sitting around, you have your phone or
Speaker 1: your computer a full set of stipedias or at least
Speaker 1: the ends. Look up a picture of Noise fund Stein.
Speaker 1: It is amazing, breath taking. It's the definition of the
Speaker 1: word breathtaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is gorgeous. It sits on a top of
Speaker 2: a mountain and like these are the mountains that have those,
Speaker 2: you know, it looks like the castle and frozen like.
Speaker 2: It sits on a tiny little peak, not for defense,
Speaker 2: but he loved the view there. If you look out
Speaker 2: from the castle the beautiful mountain ranges, you have the
Speaker 2: very small lake, but the shwan Sea is right there.
Speaker 2: You can actually see the two castles. From the video
Speaker 2: I saw online was a guy standing on the deck
Speaker 2: or not the decking, but whatever you would call the
Speaker 2: outdoor areas the dance floor, hey, come out to the deck,
Speaker 2: or a patio, the hard escape. It's got to be
Speaker 2: something more grand than those words for what those were.
Speaker 2: But anyway, what we would call like the outdoor patio
Speaker 2: of Hohenschwangal and right there in the background you can
Speaker 2: see Neus Swanstein. They're only about a mile from each other.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing is the crow flies. But it's just a
Speaker 2: gorgeous scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is. I mean whether it's summer, fall,
Speaker 1: winter in particular which with a snow on it, it's magical.
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous. And like we said, Ludwig was an early
Speaker 1: adopter of technology. One of the things that he used,
Speaker 1: or his construction people had to use, was steam powered cranes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this was not an easy place to build and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty massive castle made of very heavy
Speaker 1: brick and stone. And in addition to that he had
Speaker 1: things like an elevator. In fact, he had an elevator table.
Speaker 1: Remember we said that he enjoyed his solitude. Yes, in particular,
Speaker 1: he appreciated dining alone. He didn't even want servants around
Speaker 1: serving him. So what he would do is sit at
Speaker 1: the table in his dining room and the table would
Speaker 1: lower down, I think three stories to the kitchen. The
Speaker 1: table would be set, all the food would be put
Speaker 1: on it, and that would be raised back up for
Speaker 1: him to dine. That's how remote he wanted to be
Speaker 1: from people when he didn't want to be around people.
Speaker 2: So I don't call it quite follow that.
Speaker 1: Actually, imagine it's like a dumb waiter, but the whole
Speaker 1: table is the dumb waiter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he would be sitting at it when it
Speaker 2: was doing this.
Speaker 1: Well, No, so he would stay seated up in the
Speaker 1: dining room and the table would go and the table
Speaker 1: would come back up, all set and resplend it with
Speaker 1: a feast.
Speaker 2: And then that makes sense. I thought he wrote it down,
Speaker 2: they set the table with the food, and then he
Speaker 2: wrote it back, and I was like, that doesn't. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of fun, but that doesn't prevent them
Speaker 2: from seeing anybody. No, exactly dinner time. So the throne
Speaker 2: room was is pretty impressive. You can you know, see
Speaker 2: pictures and videos of all this stuff, like full tours
Speaker 2: online that was where the Byzantine influence really came in.
Speaker 2: It has a thirteen foot tall chandelier, never had a
Speaker 2: throne in it. But you know, this stuff is as
Speaker 2: over the top as it gets when you look at
Speaker 2: pictures and videos. It's really I mean, it's not my style, obviously,
Speaker 2: and I've never like castles are kind of fun. I've
Speaker 2: toured a couple. None of it aesthetically is like ooh,
Speaker 2: that's beautiful to me. But the ornate qualities of it
Speaker 2: I can appreciate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I think photos don't do it
Speaker 1: justice either, especially like interior photos of these rooms. They
Speaker 1: all just seem garish and gaudy, and they are basically
Speaker 1: by definition. But I'm sure it's much more impressive in
Speaker 1: person than it is looking at had a photo. You know,
Speaker 1: we should go, all right, I would totally love to go.
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to go to Germany for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I mean we're talking about maybe trying
Speaker 2: to do some like real European tour dates.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we should do a ten person show in Germany.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh I bet we could. I bet we could.
Speaker 2: Get five hundred people in a room in Germany.
Speaker 1: You're crazy.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about some other stuff. We
Speaker 2: talked about that artificial cave that was pretty amazing. He
Speaker 2: also had a singers hall which was supposedly recreated from
Speaker 2: part of the Vartsburg, which was a castle where they
Speaker 2: had American idol. Essentially, it was called the singers Kreeg
Speaker 2: Singers Contest in twelve oh seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is right in the wheelhouse of when this
Speaker 1: fantasy era would have taken place the High Middle Ages
Speaker 1: from about one thousand CE to thirteen hundred CE.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: There's also a winter garden, which essentially is an enclosed
Speaker 1: bow that looks out has an amazing view. But the
Speaker 1: thing that's really notable about that is that they their
Speaker 1: window panes with glass measuring nine feet tall about three meters,
Speaker 1: the largest tallest window panes made in the history of
Speaker 1: humanity up to that point. Yeah, pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: Now it's no big deal, but yeah, at the time
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: And then some of the other technology that he employed.
Speaker 1: He had hot and cold running water, that was not
Speaker 1: very common back then.
Speaker 2: What else he had central heat, he had forced air,
Speaker 2: he had a little electric bell system for his servants
Speaker 2: ring it in, and he had telephone lines even though
Speaker 2: there was not you know, there was known he could
Speaker 2: really call. There are very few people he could call,
Speaker 2: but he did have telephone lines.
Speaker 1: Apparently it would it would connect to hohen Schwangau, that
Speaker 1: his childhood castle a mile away.
Speaker 2: Oh really, okay, well that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also had flush toilets too. The thing is
Speaker 1: is it took forever for this to be constructed. When
Speaker 1: they broke ground, I think in eighteen sixty nine, he
Speaker 1: estimated to be about three years, and it took them
Speaker 1: longer than that just to build the gatehouse, which is
Speaker 1: like the first building of this massive castle complex, and
Speaker 1: that's where he lived while they were building the rest
Speaker 1: the palace itself. But he only lived in the palace
Speaker 1: for about six months before he died, so I think
Speaker 1: actually as well, see, the whole thing went unfinished as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact. But as he was doing this,
Speaker 1: he grew deeper and deeper and deeper in debt. And
Speaker 1: you might be like boo hiss, he used the king's
Speaker 1: money to build himself a fantasy castle. That's not correct.
Speaker 2: No, he did not use public monies. He just went
Speaker 2: into debt and traded on his family name, securing loans
Speaker 2: against that royal family name. He also got a loan
Speaker 2: from Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, who you know helped
Speaker 2: him out when he could, including vouching for him, as
Speaker 2: we'll see later. But he just you know, he was
Speaker 2: obsessed with these projects. He kept building these projects. He
Speaker 2: started another one about a year after Neus s Fenstein,
Speaker 2: which like you said, wasn't even close to being done,
Speaker 2: and they were like, all right, this is enough. We
Speaker 2: need to get this guy out of here. And this
Speaker 2: was all like kind of the quiet talk you know,
Speaker 2: around the court, and you know, it seemed like by
Speaker 2: all appearances he was still doing the bureaucratic work of
Speaker 2: the king. Like I mentioned earlier, was he was not
Speaker 2: so interested in the public sort of warring type of
Speaker 2: stuff and being a big public face. He liked to
Speaker 2: hide away, but he wasn't like just laying around in
Speaker 2: a dream world like would He would keep up with
Speaker 2: the paperwork and stuff like that that he had to do.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't enough. They wanted him out. So in
Speaker 2: March of eighteen eighty six, Prime Minister Johann von Lutz
Speaker 2: hired Bernard von Gouden, a very prominent psychiatrist who had
Speaker 2: already been treating his mentally ill brother, Ludwig's mentally ill brother.
Speaker 2: And instead of and this guy seemed like a good guy,
Speaker 2: like he was against restraints and violence, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to treat patients with dignity and respect and allow them
Speaker 2: freedoms and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very progressive for the time.
Speaker 2: Super progressive. But he did not actually examine the king himself.
Speaker 2: He talked to people around him, sexual partners that he
Speaker 2: had and stuff like that, took into account the family
Speaker 2: diagnoses here and there, and came up with his own diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Right, he did. And to be fair, von Gudden wasn't
Speaker 1: the only psychiatrist or psychologist who was tasked with preparing
Speaker 1: this report, but he was the most prominent, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he became Ludwig's personal doctor. I guess personal psychiatrist essentially,
Speaker 1: is what it came to. So three months after he
Speaker 1: was tasked with this, they released this report and they
Speaker 1: diagnosed Ludwig with paranoia, parentheses, madness, essentially saying he probably
Speaker 1: had something like schizophrenia. And then one of the other
Speaker 1: things about that report is it touched on, but apparently
Speaker 1: didn't mention explicitly. I hadn't read it, so I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure how they put it, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: in there, in not direct terms, the fact that he
Speaker 1: was gay, a gay king, right, right, And so I'm
Speaker 1: sure that by itself, like basically a report from a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist saying this would have been enough. But the impression
Speaker 1: I have is it was really the public funds and
Speaker 1: being indebted to families from other nations on Bismarck, like
Speaker 1: that's a big deal, right, And then if the creditors
Speaker 1: came after him, he's like, I don't have any money.
Speaker 1: Ultimately they're going to turn on Bavaria. And I get
Speaker 1: the impression that that was what really got them the most,
Speaker 1: right and what they were trying to protect against. So
Speaker 1: three days after that report comes out, they showed up
Speaker 1: at his doorstep and said you're under arrest. Freeze sucker.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They they brought was it, Pam Greer?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, they didn't say sugar.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, I guess that would have been sugar.
Speaker 2: They had chloroform. They had a straight jacket. Apparently they
Speaker 2: didn't have to use the straight jacket. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: about the chloroform, but they placed him under rest, sent
Speaker 2: him to the Castle of Berg. Gooden was to care
Speaker 2: for him basically kind of full time there. And here's
Speaker 2: where we get to the question of like whether or
Speaker 2: not he was genuinely mentally ill or just sort of
Speaker 2: forced out by being an eccentric, gay, young king. Well,
Speaker 2: he wasn't super young by this point, I guess. But
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen there was a paper in Germany from
Speaker 2: some mental health researchers who basically said it was an
Speaker 2: unreliable report that was politically motivated and they were just
Speaker 2: trying to get him out of there. He was still governing,
Speaker 2: he was still sort of doing the paperwork and doing
Speaker 2: the things he needed to do. He had written, in fact,
Speaker 2: Von Bismarck even vouchers for this guy, saying that they
Speaker 2: had exchanged letters right up until the very end where
Speaker 2: he seemed lucid and was in touch with reality. Seven
Speaker 2: years after that, in twenty twenty, just a few years ago,
Speaker 2: there was another report from another set of German psychiatric
Speaker 2: researchers that said, actually, it's probably pretty well founded. The
Speaker 2: fact that he was gay may have played a big part,
Speaker 2: for sure, but there's a lot of pretty good evidence
Speaker 2: here that he had a mental disorder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can make a pretty good case based on
Speaker 1: the contemporaneous reports, right, Like apparently at least once he
Speaker 1: ordered a dinner for twelve people to be set and
Speaker 1: then when he arrived in the dining room it was
Speaker 1: just him, and yet he still greeted all of the
Speaker 1: empty seats before sitting down. He would also talk to
Speaker 1: a bust of Marie Antoinette quite in depth. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like a passing like love you or anything like that,
Speaker 1: like you would have conversations with her in French. He
Speaker 1: also and this is this is this is something He
Speaker 1: would speak at a fast pace, with different ideas mixing
Speaker 1: together hallucinations and delusions. Yeah, that's a that's a big one, right.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 2: Uh? He to pay off his debts. At one point
Speaker 2: he proposed a bank robbery. Pretty good idea. It says,
Speaker 2: odd dancing and jumping movements. Who knows file that under whatever?
Speaker 2: Huh maybe just fun guy. He when they threatened his
Speaker 2: his to shut down his construction projects. Basically at one
Speaker 2: point he threatened suicide and he was he was nocturnal.
Speaker 2: He would he would be up all night, he would
Speaker 2: sleep all day. None of these things by themselves, like
Speaker 2: you know, says aha schizophrenia. But taken altogether, it definitely
Speaker 2: paints a picture with his family history of someone who
Speaker 2: may have had something legitimate going on.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think the hallucinations and delusions by
Speaker 1: themselves could account for.
Speaker 2: It, but they could have also been taking drugs.
Speaker 1: Sure, I guess so royal nineteenth century drugs. Who knows
Speaker 1: what that is.
Speaker 2: That's the good stuff.
Speaker 1: But the twenty twenty paper, essentially they said he probably
Speaker 1: could have been diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, which is
Speaker 1: characterized by odd, eccentric behavior and few if any close friends,
Speaker 1: and that definitely describes them. So it's possible, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly I mean, we're diagnosing this guy in the same
Speaker 1: way that doctor Gouden did, which was based on reports
Speaker 1: and stuff like that that people writing these papers never
Speaker 1: examined them, so it's not clear and we'll probably never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the autopsy report was sort of a
Speaker 2: big factor. There was findings on autopsy that showed he
Speaker 2: had scars on his frontal lobes for meningitis when he
Speaker 2: was a baby, so that could have been something.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean that will have some sort of effect.
Speaker 1: And like you said, they performed an autopsy which strongly
Speaker 1: suggests that he died. It's a spoiler alert. He did die.
Speaker 2: He eventually died.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was living in the nineteenth century, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he was going to die by now anyway. But he
Speaker 1: died relatively young at age forty one. Another leg of
Speaker 1: the stool. That makes him a tragic figure. And he
Speaker 1: was remember they came and got him, Doctor Gouden and
Speaker 1: some I guess hired men by the Parliament came and
Speaker 1: took him away to Castleberg, one of his father's castles,
Speaker 1: where he was essentially under house arrest. And then the
Speaker 1: next day he turned up dead. He and doctor Gouden
Speaker 1: went on a walk around the castle grounds their second
Speaker 1: of the day. This one was in the evening, and
Speaker 1: they never came back, so people went out to look
Speaker 1: for them, and when they did, they discovered them dead,
Speaker 1: floating face down in Lake Sternberg on the castle grounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the story was Ludwig wanted to drown himself, made
Speaker 2: a break for the water. Doctor Gouden went after him.
Speaker 2: They tussled in the water and doctor Gouden was drowned,
Speaker 2: and then the king drowned himself after. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of hanky stuff the way this went down first, and
Speaker 2: like they really knowing you need to be one hanky
Speaker 2: thing in this case really is the fact that they
Speaker 2: found them floating. Yeah, because when you drown, you sink,
Speaker 2: your lungs take on water, and you know, ten seconds
Speaker 2: you can be at the bottom of that lake. Maybe
Speaker 2: a few days or a week later, you might eventually
Speaker 2: float back up once like gases are released and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. But drowning victims don't float. And there was
Speaker 2: also no water in his lungs at the autopsy, or
Speaker 2: no foam at his mouth or nose or anything like that,
Speaker 2: Like he didn't drown. It just seems pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Certainly doesn't seem that way. So other people say, well, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't drown. He died from being assassinated. He was shot,
Speaker 1: as was doctor Gouden, who just happened to be in
Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time, and whoever assassinated
Speaker 1: Ludwig didn't want to leave any witnesses. And there's a
Speaker 1: whole fringe belief that this was that Ludwig was assassinated
Speaker 1: and this was covered up. And there's supposedly like the
Speaker 1: diary of a fisherman who was there at the scene,
Speaker 1: who that he left this confession or description of what
Speaker 1: really happened after he died. Supposedly somebody in the same
Speaker 1: royal family as Ludwig or the royal house had his
Speaker 1: coat that he wore that night and had two bullet
Speaker 1: holes in it, and supposedly she showed it to some
Speaker 1: other people. All of this stuff. The big problem is
Speaker 1: it's all second and third hand accounts and all of
Speaker 1: the evidence that's referenced the physical evidence, and it's gone vanished,
Speaker 1: burned up in a house fire, no one knows where
Speaker 1: it went whatever. So there's it's just going to always
Speaker 1: essentially remain a fringe theory. Unless we find like a
Speaker 1: writing from Auto von Bismarck talking about how he had
Speaker 1: Ludvig assassinated, we're just probably never gonna know what happened
Speaker 1: to him. And there's actually a group called the Google Monitor.
Speaker 2: Did I say that Right's really more like MENA.
Speaker 1: And they're essentially like a Bavarian independent society who say,
Speaker 1: not only was Ludwig assassinated, that makes everything that came
Speaker 1: after that illegitimate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said it you hate himlouts? Why do you
Speaker 2: hate himlouts?
Speaker 1: Their reasoning. So that's the thing. One of the there
Speaker 1: were very many people who had good reason to have
Speaker 1: Ludvig assassinated. He was deposed, his uncle was put into power,
Speaker 1: and Ludwig had been taken care of, so why kill him?
Speaker 1: And the Google monitor says that von Bismarck had found
Speaker 1: out that Ludwig was negotiating with France to help liberate
Speaker 1: Bavaria from this new German empire, so that he could
Speaker 1: you take his rightful place on the throne again. And
Speaker 1: Bismarck was like, we can't have that, and assassinated him
Speaker 1: to who knows.
Speaker 2: We'll never know. He died at forty one, that's one
Speaker 2: thing we do know, and he very much like you've
Speaker 2: been saying, it was a tragic figure. His bestie there,
Speaker 2: Empress Elizabeth, put some jasmine in his hands in his casket,
Speaker 2: which is a very sweet thing to do. French poet
Speaker 2: Verlaine called him the only true king of this century.
Speaker 2: And the irony of all this is that Neus Schwanstein,
Speaker 2: which had basically not bankrupted him but put him in
Speaker 2: dire financial Straits and may have led to his oulster.
Speaker 2: Kind of right after he died, they opened it to
Speaker 2: tourists and it has made a ton of money since
Speaker 2: then and continues to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they estimate one hundred and thirty million people have
Speaker 1: visited it since they opened it a few weeks after
Speaker 1: his death. Isn't that nuts?
Speaker 2: It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Also, if you go to Castlebergh in Lake Sternberg, there's
Speaker 1: a cross coming out of the water to mark the
Speaker 1: spot where his body was found. And he's even more
Speaker 1: beloved in death than he was in life. Every August
Speaker 1: twenty fourth and twenty fifth, Fusion, the town nearest the
Speaker 1: castle celebrates his birthday, So he's kind of a big
Speaker 1: deal around there, you know. Yeah, totally great, great story.
Speaker 1: I love Ludwig the second. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: got the point across or not, but he was a
Speaker 1: tragic figure.
Speaker 2: Tragic figure.
Speaker 1: You got anything else, I'm gonna guess no, I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. Okay, that means everybody, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna say this is from Parker and
Speaker 2: it's about Share. I'm kind of going to bad for
Speaker 2: Share with some of her song themes and album titles.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, I hope people aren't too hard on share
Speaker 2: these days, for the title Gypsy's Tramps and Thieves, and
Speaker 2: for the song half Breed. I was a young child
Speaker 2: living in apple pie life when those songs were released,
Speaker 2: and they were my first introduction to how unfair life
Speaker 2: can be. I felt a lot of empathy for the
Speaker 2: character singing the songs and swore to myself never to
Speaker 2: make people feel like that. Share is awesome. So thanks
Speaker 2: for that great episode. And you know that's something I
Speaker 2: don't even think we mentioned that there are certain singers
Speaker 2: who at times have sung sort of as character in character.
Speaker 2: My own beloved Billy Joel wrote songs about, you know,
Speaker 2: seemingly from the perspective of a Vietnam vet or from
Speaker 2: a longboat, you know, long shoreman and a fisherman, and
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen, and you know, there's long been a rich
Speaker 2: history of sort of writing in character and as a
Speaker 2: character and singing as a character. So that is how
Speaker 2: Parker took it, and it seems like it imparted a
Speaker 2: good lesson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, that's a great, great point, Parker. Thanks
Speaker 1: for writing in to point that out. If you want
Speaker 1: to be like Parker and write in to point something
Speaker 1: out that's very insightful. We love that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.